Today You Will Forget
by miss selah
Summary: A crack fortune and a forgetful miko . . . a tale after a tale and miko who had forgotten.


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Today you will Forget_**

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Today you will remember something._ Kagome Higurashi, age twenty seven, read the cryptic fortune cookie and arched a single, feminine eyebrow. She read it out loud, and her boyfriend of two years, Kito.

Kito shrugged, and his short black hair bobbed. "Odd, yes. But it's just a fortune cookie, Kagome." Kagome was staring at the fortune with brows drawn together, trying to decipher the meaning behind it. Surely it wasn't _so_ simple. . . fortune cookies normally were more vague than this. . . or deeper. Kito sighed and plucked the thin paper from her fingers. "You put far too much faith in crack fortunes, Kagome -chan."

_A cursed monk, with beads wrapped thrice around his cursed hand with the portal to hell, smiled and plucked the mah – jong fortune piece from her fingertips. "You put far too much faith in crack fortune tellers, Kagome – san."_

Kagome shook her head, wondering where in the world the images and sound had come from. _A cursed monk with beads wrapped thrice around a hand with a portal to hell._ . . she had probably seen it in a movie somewhere, at some point in time. It would make for a good movie.

"Kagome? You looked funny there for a minute." Kito said, leaning across the table and laying his hand on hers, connecting them in the simplest way he knew. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Do you want to talk about it?" A teenage demon slayer, who sat across from her in waters that were far too warm for their health asked, concern dripping in her voice.

_She had shook her head, and told her that there was nothing to talk about. _

"_Inuyasha. . . he said something again, didn't he?" the demon slayer asked. _

"_No, he didn't say anything to me." She assured her friend, with a false smile upon her face. Of course he had said something to her again. _

"Inuyasha." Kagome muttered, tasting the word. It sounded familiar, and in the thought, she had been sitting across from the demon slayer. It had been _her_ voice that had answered her. It had been _her_ feelings that had been hurt.

Perhaps it hadn't been a movie. . . perhaps it had been a dream.

"Who's Inuyasha?" Kito asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. . ." Was her answer.

But then, she did.

_A silver haired boy was pinned to the tree, immobile as he had been for over half a century. But she didn't know that._

"Wow!" The girl from the future – her – exclaimed when she saw the boy pinned to the tree she knew so well. "What cool ears!" She walked up to him, and ignored the feeling of déjà vu, just like she always had. Instead, she stood upon the high roots of the Goshinboku, or ancient god tree, and watched him in repose.

_A warm feeling spread through her as she watched him sleep. This time, the familiarity of the situation was too much to ignore. She reached in to stroke his cheek. . . and instead she plucked and ear. _

"_So soft. . ." she whispered, nearly silently. "Like a dog's ear. . ."_

_Arrows and spears suddenly flew past her face, landing deep inside the tree, and threating to pin her to it like the boy was pinned to it. _

_"Get away from Inuyasha!" Someone cried out in a crowd of villagers. Kagome turned and stared – there were so many of them. _

_"What are you doing in Inuyasha's forest?" Another demanded. _

_"Who's Inuyasha?" Was her response. _

"Inuyasha was a half breed demon who sought the sacred jewel with his companions – Sango, the demon slayer, Miroku, the holy man, Shippo, the orphaned Kitsune, Kirere, the fire cat, and a nameless miko who no mythology books contain any information on." Kito supplied, showing off his knowledge,

Kagome clapped her hands lightly. "Wow! Kito, you're an awesome teacher!" He had truly picked the job that was right for him.

They had meet in college, both trying to earn their teaching degrees – him, for mythology and astrology, and her, for history. She had never really been sure why she had picked the profession – she wasn't really fond of school, as a teacher or a student, and she couldn't help but get the feeling from time to time that it was written completely _wrong._

"You're reading it wrong." She told a red –headed child with a tail to match. He sat in her lap, his head beneath her chin, and was reading a children's book she had brought with her from her own time period.

_Shippo stuck his tongue out at her, and then grinned. "No, I'm reading it right. It was just written wrong." The child sounded so sure of himself, she didn't tell him that Dr. Suess always rhymed. _

"Kagome?" Kito asked, concern back in his face.

Kagome stood abruptly. "I have to go home, Kito." She told him, and left a twenty on the table to pay for their lunch.

Kito made a move to call the waitor to get their check, and looked back to see Kagome's quickly retreating back. "Kagome! Wait! I'll walk you home!"

"No thank you!" Some guys just couldn't take a hint. . .

_"Some guys just can't take a hint. . ." Kagome said with a sigh as she watched a whirlwind of dust retreat in to te distance, a pack of wolves in his wake._

_His pack of wolves in his wake._

_"What was that all about?" Inuyasha asked, prying himself off the ground. "You claim to not like him, but you sit me when I try to defend you!?" The hurt in his voice was obvious to everyone except Kagome and Inuyasha._

_"I don't like him!" Kagome defended herself. "I keep telling him over and over again, but he doesn't get it: I'm not his woman!"_

She shoved the door open to the café and stormed outside, holding her head as she headed away from her apartment that was so close to her University and headed towards a place she hadn't been in nearly 18 years. . . the run – down Higurashi shrine.

_"Mom! Grandpa! Souta! I'm back!" Kagome cried as she stepped in to the house, a complete Shikon jewel beating beneath her breast bone. She cradled it with one hand and a smile. It was finally over. Naraku was dead. . . and the Shikon no Tama was complete._

_All her fears proved to be null – Inuyasha hadn't gone to hell with Kikyo, and the well which had housed the finally jewel shard allowed her – and only her – to pass between the centuries. She could live in two different time periods, and she wouldn't have to leave either one of her families!_

_But no one was home._

_A blinking red light outside the window caught her attention, and Kagome opened the front door at a brisk knock, only to see the police. Her stomach dropped._

_"Is everything alright, officer?" Kagome asked politely, keeping any and all fear from her voice._

_"There's been an accident."_

Kagome looked up the towering steps and quickly raced up them. The shrine, which had once been a place of beauty and was always full of people, was now empty and in a state of disrepair.

_She knew that – as the oldest Higurashi of this generation – it had been her job to keep up the family shrine. But she couldn't bear the thought of it. She couldn't live there, in a house full of haunting memories, all alone._

_For that night, her family had died in a car accident._

_"Do you recognize this?" The police officer at the door held up a bloodied baseball cap with two tiny white ears glued on._

_She had made that for Souta, only a week prior, and had given it to him to congradulate him for passing elementary school._

_Crying, she nodded and knew the worst had happened._

Kagome walked across the shrine grounds, as empty as a cemetary. Grafitti covered the walls, and windows to her old house were broken in and her heart hurt, but she didn't stop.

She wouldn't stop.

_She chewed on a piece of pork, and quickly flipped through the channels on the t.v., looking for something that would distract her. She had ordered Chinese food – she was far to emotionally drained to cook for herself – and had stayed home, instead of going to tell Inuyasha what had happened._

_The police had said that they might come back that evening, and she wanted to be home._

_She finished the last dregs of her tea, and looked down at her plate._

_All that remained was a fortune cookie._

_She shrugged and reached down to crack it open. It was bad luck to eat a fortune cookie without reading the fortune._

_Today you will forget._

And she did.

She wasn't here to reminisce.

She was here for only one purpose.

She stopped in front of a well house older than she and looked up at the doors. It had been years since she had last been here. . . and years more since she had remembered it's importance.

It had been six months, nearly seven, and Kagome had decided to live the old shrine. It wouldn't be the same without her family. She closed the door to the house for the last time, and spared only a passing glance at the well house. There had been something important about it. . .

But she kept walking anyways.

It probably didn't matter that much.

And on the other side of the well, a tiny ceremony was being performed to honor the death of one Kagome Higurashi – for death was the only reason that she wouldn't have returned to them.

Kagome threw open to doors to the well house, and peered down in to the darkness. There was nothing really special about this place – she had been there a hundred times before, and she had most certainly never time traveled to a place where demons resided.

But her memories begged to differ.

Kagome scoffed. Her memories were wrong.

Waving her hands in front of her so that she wouldn't plow head first in to a spider's web, she took a cautious step forward, and then another. The floor creaked beneath her weight, and Kagome was afraid for a moment that the termite infested wood couldn't hold her.

But not worried enough that she would stop.

She had to see for herself. She had to prove to herself that it wasn't real. . . .just the working of an over imaginative mind.

She stood upon the stairs, and looked down at the well. It called to her, as a mother would it's child, and Kagome knew that with out a shout of a doubt, that her home was on the other side.

Enthusiastic, Kagome speed down the stairs, taking them two at a time. She was almost there. . . and then she could explain everything to Inuyasha, and they could be together, like they had talked about. He would understand. Everything was going to be okay. . .

Her only warning before the stairs broke beneath her feet was the scream of the wood – and even that hadn't given her enough time to jump to safety. She crashed to the ground, and heard something snap. A piece of wood? No. . . it had been her back.

She looked towards the well, and the dim light that it had been giving off began to fade out.

"No!" Kagome cried, reaching forward, ignoring the blood that stained her shirt. "I'm fine! I can still make it!" She tried to drag herself along the ground, but her ribs – which were no longer inside of her body – wouldn't allow her to.

"No. . ." She mumbled quietly, tears streaming down her face, as the light faded in to nothingness.

But the light had never faded.

Kagome just never woke up.


End file.
